A finalist for both the National Book Award (for Bury the Chains) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (for King Leopold's Ghost), Adam Hochschild first gave us this snapshot of South Africa in 1990—a very different country from the one we know now, in which no one was yet predicting the end of Apartheid. Hochschild finds the roots of that system in the 1838 Battle of Blood River, when the Boers defeated the Zulu nation for control of Zulu lands, then painted themselves as the ever-watchful potential victims of black African savagery. With an updated preface and epilogue, the book suggests disturbing parallels with our own history of "manifest destiny."